I am neither a seven-year-old girl nor a Bronie (look it up), but I can spot a decent film about anthropomorphic miniature horses when I see one. My Little Pony: The Movie (not to be confused with 1986’s My Little Pony: The Movie, though I can see why you would) is not going to win any Oscars, but it’s a solid time-waster for anyone obsessed with tiny equines.

Toronto-born Tara Strong (136 episodes of

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) provides the voice of Twilight Sparkle, whose peaceable kingdom is threatened by the arrival of the evil Storm King (Liev Schreiber) and his hench-pony Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt). Twilight and her pals go in search of the queen of the hippos, though they eventually learn it’s really the queen of the hippogriffs they want – and she’s been turned into a seahorse (or in the language of this series, a mer-pony.)

Along the way, they meet Capper the cat (Taye Diggs) and a passel of pirate parrots, whom I was disappointed to note did not have even smaller parrots perched on their shoulders. They occasionally stop to burst into song. And they take to the sky in an airship whose technology is almost steam-pony.

I could have done without the weird collection of animal townsfolk, who looked like a combination of Studio Ghibli castoffs and Disney failed villain prototypes. But at least there aren’t any minions in this movie. And I leave you with the fact that, since the film comes from Allspark Pictures, a division of Hasbro that also owns the rights to the animated Transformers characters, we might yet see Ponies vs. Transformers. Now that would be a movie for the whole family.